Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Warmists allege CO2 must be the cause of the 0.7C global warming recovery from the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, because they claim there isn't any other plausible explanation. The Sun and solar amplification mechanisms are dismissed as a cause because sunspots peaked around 1960, even though sunspots remained at relatively high levels, considered as the solar grand maximum of the late 20th century.

Sunspot numbers and trend

The accumulated solar energy [sunspot time-integral] continued to increase until the end of the 20th century along with global temperature, and then both started to decline after peaking in ~2000.

A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres finds a link between solar cycles, the natural quasi-biennial oscillation [QBO], and the late winter polar vortex. The authors use ozone as a marker of "modulations of the winter Arctic stratosphere by the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and the solar cycle. It is found that both the QBO and solar forcing in low latitudes can perturb the late winter polar vortex, likely via planetary wave divergence, causing an early breakdown of the vortex in the form of Stratospheric Sudden Warming [SSW]." The QBO and Sudden Stratospheric Warmings have in turn been linked to solar activity, suggesting that the Sun could be the ultimate source of polar vortex/jet stream blocking variability.

The total column ozone (TCO) observed from satellites and assimilated in the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) since 1979 is used as anatmospheric tracerto study the modulations of the winter Arctic stratosphere by the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) and the solar cycle. It is found that both the QBO and solar forcing in low latitudes can perturb the late winter polar vortex, likely via planetary wave divergence, causing an early breakdown of the vortex in the form of Stratospheric Sudden Warming. As a result, TCO within the vortex in late winter can increase by ~60 DU during either a solar maximum or an easterly phase of the QBO, or both, relative to the least perturbed state when the solar cycle is minimum and the QBO is in the westerly phase. In addition, from the solar maximum to solar minimum during the QBO easterly phase, the change in TCO is found to be statistically insignificant. Therefore, the ‘reversal’ of the Holton–Tan effect, reported in some previous studies using lower stratospheric temperature, is not evident in the TCO behavior of both observation and assimilation.

A paper published today in Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructs temperatures and CO2 levels using a pollen proxy in Turkeyover the past 600,000 years and shows remarkable agreement with the Arctic ice core data, with prior interglacials as warm or warmer than the present interglacial, similar vegetation, and prior interglacials with CO2 levels at or above those of the pre-industrial period.

First graph at left is the pollen temperature proxy. Added red line shows 3 prior interglacials as warm or warmer. Third graph is CO2 levels, with most prior interglacial CO2 levels as high or higher than the pre-industrial period [red line is added]. Second graph from right is Greenland ice core temperature proxy. Last graph is solar insolation in January and June.

Highlights

Lake Van record is the longest Quaternary paleoclimate archive in the Near East.

•

It documents multiple glacial–interglacial cycles encompassing the last 600 ka.

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The pollen data reflect high-amplitude climate shifts.

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The results are compared with continental, marine and ice-core records.

Abstract

Lake Van is the fourth largest terminal lake in the world (38.5°N, 43°E, volume 607 km3, area 3570 km2, maximum water depth 460 m), extending for 130 km WSW–ENE on the eastern Anatolian high plateau, Turkey. The sedimentary record of Lake Van, partly laminated, obtains a long and continuous continental sequence that covers multiple interglacial–glacial cycles. Promoted by the potential of the sedimentary sequence for reconstructing the paleoecological and paleoclimate development of the Near East, a deep drilling operation was carried out in 2010 supported by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP). The 219 m long continental pollen record presented here is based on a well-dated composite profile drilled on the so-called Ahlat Ridge in water depth of 360 m encompassing the last 600,000 years. It is the longest continuous continental pollen record of the Quaternary in the entire Near East and central Asia obtained to date. The glacial–interglacial cycles and pronounced interstadials are clearly reflected in the vegetation development based on millennial-scale time resolution. In general, the glacial/stadial vegetation is characterized by dwarf-shrub steppe and desert steppe, whereas the climax vegetation of past interglacials can be described as oak steppe-forest similar to the present interglacial in this sensitive semi-arid region between the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean Seas. By comparing the Lake Van pollen record with other western Asian and southern European long continental pollen sequences as well as marine and ice-core records, the regional variability of the climate signals is also discussed.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research claims that the probability of the streak of contiguous US average monthly temperatures from June 2011 - June 2012 "occurring randomly was quoted as (1/3)^13, or about one in 1.6 million."

Maybe it's just me looking at those stupid denier lines, but seems to me the chances that such a "temperature streak" could occur naturally in the US [only 2% of the planet!] are to an approximation about one million in one million.

The background on how skeptics view those stupid global warming denier lines:

UPDATE:Sunshine Hours analyzed the US temperature record and found another similar "temperature streak" in 1933/1934, and that's after all of the fraudulent up-justing of the US temperature records:

“A recent observation in NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center’s monthly assessment of the state of the climate was that contiguous US average monthly temperatures were in the top third of monthly ranked historical temperatures for thirteen straight months from June 2011 — June 2012. The chance of such a streak occurring randomly was quoted as (1/3)13, or about one in 1.6 million.”

I’m not going to discuss the “chances”. But I am going to simply note the following.

The NOAA ranks months temperature and precipitation based on the number of months from 1895. So 2012 was the 118th year. If a month is ranked 118 (as of 2012) then it was the warmest month from 1895 to 2012.

Using the same 12 month June to June time frame and using data from October 2012 ( before NOAA’s recent update) it took me about 10 minutes to find out a similar streak.

From June 1933 to to June 1934 8 months were ranked 100 and above. 2 of them were ranked 118.

From June 2011 to June 2012 8 months were ranked 100 and above. 1 of them was ranked 118.

year

Month

Rank

1933

6

118

1933

7

104

1933

9

116

1933

12

115

1934

1

114

1934

4

107

1934

5

118

1934

6

108

year

Month

Rank

2011

7

114

2011

8

117

2012

1

115

2012

2

104

2012

3

118

2012

4

116

2012

5

117

2012

6

107

What are the odds of that occurring 80 years apart!

A recent observation in NOAA's National Climatic Data Center's monthly assessment of the state of the climate was that contiguous US average monthly temperatures were in the top third of monthly ranked historical temperatures for thirteen straight months from June 2011 — June 2012. The chance of such a streak occurring randomly was quoted as (1/3)13, or about one in 1.6 million. The streak continued for three more months before the October 2012 value dropped below the upper tercile. The climate system displays a degree of persistence that increases this probability, relative to the assumption of independence. This paper puts forth different statistical techniques that more accurately quantify the probability of this and other such streaks. We consider how much more likely streaks are when an underlying warming trend is accounted for in the record, the chance of streaks occurring anywhere in the record, and the distribution of the record's longest streak.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

A paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds trees in Southern California were starved of CO2 during the last glacial period from 7,700 to 55,000 years ago, at near the lowest levels that can sustain photosynthesis.

According to the authors, CO2 level "ranged between 180 and 220 ppm during glacial periods, rose to ≈280 ppm before the industrial period, and is currently approaching 380 ppm [400 ppm currently] in the modern atmosphere," and "glacial trees were undergoing carbon starvation."

Alarmist organizations such as 350.org claim CO2 must be reduced to 350 ppm, or even as low as 300 ppm, to "save the planet," which flies in the face of thousands of scientific papers demonstrating that CO2 fertilization significantly improves plant productivity and resistance to drought, and dramatically greens the planet. Current levels of CO2 are very low in comparison to the past 500+ million years, and most plant and animal life evolved on Earth with CO2 levels 10 or more times higher than the present.

In addition, the authors paradoxically find "glacialhumidity was ≈10% higher than that in modern times, indicating that differences in vapor-pressure deficits did not impose additional constrictions" on photosynthesis. This is interesting given that climate models assume specific humidity greatly increases to create a positive feedback in a warmer climate [while relative humidity remains stable], but this paper suggests humidity was instead ~10% higher during the last ice age.

The Rancho La Brea tar pit fossil collection includes Juniperus (C3) wood specimens that 14C date between 7.7 and 55 thousand years (kyr) B.P., providing a constrained record of plant response for southern California during the last glacial period. Atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) ranged between 180 and 220 ppm during glacial periods, rose to ≈280 ppm before the industrial period, and is currently approaching 380 ppm in the modern atmosphere. Here we report on δ13C of Juniperus wood cellulose, and show that glacial and modern trees were operating at similar leaf-intercellular [CO2](c i)/atmospheric [CO2](c a) values. As a result, glacial trees were operating at c i values much closer to the CO2-compensation point for C3 photosynthesis than modern trees, indicating that glacial trees were undergoing carbon starvation. In addition, we modeled relative humidity by using δ18O of cellulose from the same Juniperus specimens and found that glacial humidity was ≈10% higher than that in modern times, indicating that differences in vapor-pressure deficits did not impose additional constrictions on c i/c a in the past. By scaling ancient c i values to plant growth by using modern relationships, we found evidence that C3 primary productivity was greatly diminished in southern California during the last glacial period.

Friday, April 25, 2014

A commentary published today in Nature Climate Change concludes on the basis of a new Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction that estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2 are lower than previously believed. According to the author,

"If the new reconstruction of Southern Hemisphere temperature is accurate, thenestimates of climate sensitivity — the response of global temperature change to a given amount of external radiative forcing [mostly from CO2] — may be lower than those calculated based solely on Northern Hemisphere reconstructions10. Indeed, instrumental temperature data suggest that warming in the Northern Hemisphere has been greater than that observed in the Southern Hemisphere over the past two decades (Fig. 1c) — a feature reproduced in the current suite of climate models11. Therefore, this hemispheric asymmetry may be a fundamental feature of the climate system's response to a change in radiative forcing12, wherebythe ocean-dominated Southern Hemisphere acts as a buffer of sorts to global temperature change on decadal to centennial timescales. On the other hand,Neukom et al. propose that divergent hemispheric temperatures arise from strongnatural climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere, and have been a constant feature of the past millennium."

"Given the new information now available from the Southern Hemisphere, climate scientists must consider a larger role for natural climate variability in contributing to global temperature changes over the past millennium. While the new reconstruction brings strong additional support to the phrase 'anthropogenic global warming', it also highlights the limits of our current ability to understand, and predict, global temperature variations from decade to decade."

Temperature reconstructions of the past millennium rely heavily on Northern Hemisphere data. Now a Southern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction is available and sheds light on the complexity of the interhemispheric temperature relationship.

For far too long the climate science community has grappled with an inconvenient truth: the vast majority of the datasets used to constrain temperature trends of the recent past come from the Northern Hemisphere. Over a dozen reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere temperature spanning the past millennium exist and have played a critical role in distinguishing natural from anthropogenic climate change. However, the extent to which recent temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere resemble those in the Southern Hemisphere remains unclear. Such information is critical to a complete understanding of the mechanisms of global, rather than hemispheric, climate change. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Raphael Neukom and co-authors1 present a new, millennium-long reconstruction of Southern Hemisphere temperature by combining information from a wide variety of palaeoclimate sources. Although the new reconstruction resembles the Northern Hemisphere reconstructions in some key aspects — the anomalous nature of twentieth century warming being one of them — it also suggests that temperatures in the two hemispheres may have differed more than they have agreed over the past millennium.

The best-dated, highest-resolution records of past climate variability rarely extend beyond the past millennium, making this time period an important test bed for quantitative comparisons between climate field reconstructions and numerical climate model simulations of past climate2, 3. Yearly temperature can be reconstructed from archives, such as corals, ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments and cave stalagmites, by calibrating their geochemical or physical signals against the instrumental record of climate, where they overlap over the past century. In this regard, extremely poor data coverage for Southern Hemisphere ocean temperature observations makes this calibration more difficult (Fig. 1). Scientists use a variety of advanced statistical techniques to extract the shared signals across a given network of palaeoclimate records. The uncertainties associated with reconstructed temperature estimates inevitably increase further back in time, as the number of available records decreases, but can be quantified using a variety of approaches.

a, Map showing the average number of marine temperature observations per month from the International Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set (http://go.nature.com/qlA4c6) in the interval 1880–1950. Spatial coverage: 2.0° latitude × 2.0° longitude global grid. b, Same as panel a, but for the 1950–2013 interval. c, Northern and Southern Hemisphere yearly temperature anomalies over the the period 1880–2013, computed with respect to 1951–1980, from the GISTEMP dataset (ref.13 and references therein, http://go.nature.com/8iUuVX and http://go.nature.com/yy2NLB).

One of the first such reconstructions was the so-called hockey stick, published by Mann et al. in 19994. As a reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature spanning the past millennium, the hockey stick graph reflected a long-term cooling into the seventeenth century, the stick, followed by a sharp warming that began in the late nineteenth century, the blade. Multiple teams of scientists have subsequently generated dozens of alternative Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions, each using slightly different methods and data networks5. Climate model simulations that include natural forcings from volcanic eruptions and solar variability, as well as anthropogenic forcings such as greenhouse gases, reproduce many of the key features seen in the collection of Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions, within the combined uncertainties of the forcings and the reconstructions5. Such features include multi-year, hemispheric-scale cooling associated with large volcanic eruptions, as well as pronounced warming over the industrial era. The high level of data–model agreement suggests that scientists have a good grasp of the dominant mechanisms of climate change on decadal to centennial timescales, and that such mechanisms are fairly well represented in the current suite of climate models used to project future temperature.

[I beg to differ:]

However, the new reconstruction of Southern Hemisphere temperature1 suggests that the climate model simulations of past climate systematically underestimate the magnitude of natural climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere. At first glance, the reconstruction contains the same basic features of the Northern Hemisphere family of reconstructions — a centuries-long cooling into the seventeenth century, and a twentieth-century warming of unprecedented duration and magnitude. But a close comparison between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere reconstructions reveals many intervals when the two series diverge for decades at a time. Notably, some of these differences occur following large volcanic eruptions, when the Northern Hemisphere cools significantly but the Southern Hemisphere does not, at least according to the new reconstruction1. The fact that many of these differences occur within the past 400 years, when the data networks from both hemispheres are most robust, makes it less likely that such temperature differences are artifacts of poor data coverage. That said, it is possible that small but cumulative age errors in single palaeoclimate records may smear out interannual variability in large-scale temperature reconstructions6, 7 — currently the topic of vigorous debate8, 9.

If the new reconstruction of Southern Hemisphere temperature is accurate, then estimates of climate sensitivity — the response of global temperature change to a given amount of external radiative forcing — may be lower than those calculated based solely on Northern Hemisphere reconstructions10. Indeed, instrumental temperature data suggest that warming in the Northern Hemisphere has been greater than that observed in the Southern Hemisphere over the past two decades (Fig. 1c) — a feature reproduced in the current suite of climate models11. Therefore, this hemispheric asymmetry may be a fundamental feature of the climate system's response to a change in radiative forcing12, whereby the ocean-dominated Southern Hemisphere acts as a buffer of sorts to global temperature change on decadal to centennial timescales. On the other hand, Neukom et al. propose that divergent hemispheric temperatures arise from strong natural climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere, and have been a constant feature of the past millennium.

Given the new information now available from the Southern Hemisphere, climate scientists must consider a larger role for natural climate variability in contributing to global temperature changes over the past millennium. While the new reconstruction brings strong additional support to the phrase 'anthropogenic global warming', it also highlights the limits of our current ability to understand, and predict, global temperature variations from decade to decade. In other words, global temperatures will warm appreciably by 2100, but the road may be bumpy and full of surprises.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds a "strong" correlation of solar activity to the hydrological cycle in NW China over the past 700 years.

According to the authors, "the underlying periodicity in groundwater recharge fluctuations is similar to those of solar induced climate cycle “Suess wiggles” [also known as the DeVries cycle] and appears to be coherent with phases of the climate fluctuations and solar cycles. Matching periodicity of groundwater recharge rates and solar and climate cycles renders a strong impression that solar induced climate signals may act as a critical amplifier for driving the underlying hydrographic cycle through the common coupling of long-term Sun-climate groundwater linkages."

Multiple spectral and statistical analyses of a 700-year long temporal record of groundwater recharge from the dry lands, Badain Jaran Desert (Inner Mongolia) of North West China reveal a stationary harmonic cycle at ~200 ± 20 year. Interestingly, the underlying periodicity in groundwater recharge fluctuations is similar to those of solar induced climate cycle “Suess wiggles” and appears to be coherent with phases of the climate fluctuations and solar cycles. Matching periodicity of groundwater recharge rates and solar and climate cycles renders a strong impression that solar induced climate signals may act as a critical amplifier for driving the underlying hydrographic cycle through the common coupling of long-term Sun-climate groundwater linkages.

A recent paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology finds evidence of incorrect temperature data homogenization over the 20th century in the Northern Territory of Australia, falsely creating a warming trend from the cooling trend present in the raw data. According to the author, "With the data available [in Northern Australia],the only option to produce warming trends is to overweight the cold years in the middle of the 1970s and the subsequent return to warmer temperatures," but that with proper data homogenization, there is no warming trend. According to the paper, "The Northern Territory of Australia has a unique situation of an extension larger than France and a population of 200,000, with only three meteorology stations open for more than 40 years, Darwin (DW), Alice Springs (AS) and Tennant Creek, and only two of them, [Darwin] DW and AS, providing data over 100 years, and from 500 to more than 1,000 km separating these stations and the stations in the neighbouring states of Australia.This "smoking gun" of temperature data tampering in Darwin, Australia was pointed out over 4 years ago by Willis Eschenbach at WUWT, illustrated by Fig. 7 below showing a cooling trend of 0.7C per century in the raw data was up-justed to show a warming trend of 1.2C per century in the official data:

As the author of the paper points out in the introduction below, "The science of climate change is characterized by selective filtering and sometimes manipulating the experimental evidence to compute rate of rise of temperatures or accelerations of sea levels much larger than what they actually are. While no particular local station records can necessarily be expected to conform to the global average pattern, the global average pattern is or should be built on the basis of the local results. If the IPCC global average temperature compilation incorporates some information from some of the local Australian records and this information is faulty in this regard, and the global average is suspect to the degree that it has been influenced by the use of the Australian records. While this paper is focused on the Northern Territory of Australia, similar arguments may certainly apply for other geographical areas worldwide further supporting the claim that the rate of rise of temperature and the acceleration of sea levels are presently overestimated."

Indeed, ample evidence exists that the global, US, Australian, New Zealand, Arctic and numerous other international temperature records have been tampered or "up-justed" to produce an artificial warming trend long after such records were collected.

The Northern Territory of Australia has a unique situation of an extension larger than France and a population of 200,000, with only three meteorology stations open for more than 40 years, Darwin (DW), Alice Springs (AS) and Tennant Creek, and only two of them, DW and AS, providing data over 100 years, and from 500 to more than 1,000 km separating these stations and the stations in the neighbouring states of Australia. Homogenizations of data in between different measuring sites for the same location as well as the way to derive the missed data to complete at least 100 years from the neighbouring locations are analysed in details and the effects on the temperature trends are straightforwardly investigated. Using properly homogenised data over 130 years and a linear fitting, the warming maximum and minimum temperatures are +0.009 and +0.057 °C/10 years for Alice Springs and −0.025 and 0.064 °C/10 years for Darwin. With the data available, the only option to produce warming trends is to overweight the cold years in the middle of the 1970s and the subsequent return to warmer temperatures. Starting from 1980, to compute trends, there is still a clear warming in Alice Springs, but also clear cooling in Tennant Creek, and a mixed behaviour with warming maximum temperatures and cooling minimum temperatures in Darwin.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Before climate change, 'alarmists' and 'deniers' had it out over hazardous waste, acid rain, the ozone layer and rain forests.

By JAMES HUFFMAN

April 23, 2014 7:06 p.m. ET THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Climate change has been the dominant environmental concern of the 21st century. Public discussion of the topic is less an informed exchange of ideas than a strident debate pitting alarmists against deniers—at least that is how each side labels the other. Both are secure in the knowledge that truth, reason and the moral high ground undergird their positions.

And thus it has always been with environmental policy. There was a brief period of productive collaboration during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, but thereafter "green" politics settled into a stark polarization as issues like hazardous waste, environmental racism, acid rain, the ozone layer and the Amazonian rain forest each came to the fore. Climate change is just the latest chapter.

It is this larger story that Patrick Allitt tells in "A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism." In recounting partisan battles, Mr. Allitt's objectivity is refreshing.

His account begins with the environmental initiatives inspired by Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (1962) and more apocalyptic writings, like Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" (1968) and Barry Commoner's "The Closing Circle" (1971). In Mr. Allitt's telling, these books inspired such strong public responses because the public was already attuned to the existential threats of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. In the 1960s and early 1970s, there was broad national support for the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

A Climate of Crisis By Patrick Allitt (Penguin, 384 pages, $29.95)

There were dramatic reductions in pollution, expansions of national parks and wilderness areas, and the restoration of several threatened species. Even so, environmentalists continued to cry wolf and were undeterred when their doom-saying forecasts of global famine and ecological ruin failed to materialize. The consensus collapsed, and the public grew skeptical, especially the people bearing the significant and often unintended costs of regulation. The acid-rain and environmental-racism scares, writes Mr. Allitt, "turned out to be evanescent." Yet companies had spent hundreds of millions on regulatory compliance. Many apple farmers were put out of business in 1989 by what proved to be baseless claims that the chemical Alar was causing cancer in schoolchildren. And numerous Northwest communities were devastated in the 1990s by a 90% cut in public-land timber harvests, which crippled the timber industry to save the Northern Spotted Owl. Scientists later found that the greatest threat to this owl was its cousin, the Barred Owl.

The environmental lobby seldom acknowledged its failures—or even its successes. Since 1990, there has been a 90% reduction in automobile emissions (and a 99% reduction since 1960), yet the car remains public enemy No. 1. Despite widespread recognition that ethanol has few if any environmental benefits, subsidies and mandated use persist—and food prices have been driven higher by the diversion of corn from food to fuel production.Environmentalism has grown into an industry of interest groups, lobbyists, litigators, impact assessors and bureaucrats who rely on warnings of impending disaster to sustain and expand their enterprises. It is much the same with their opponents, for whom the wolf is always at the door—notwithstanding numerous examples of their somehow surviving what they had vehemently insisted were business-killing regulations. Both sides reacted in predictable ways when climate change reared its political head in the early 1990s.

Mr. Allitt covers this ground well and fairly presents the views of everyone from "Deep Ecologist" Arne Naess, who believed that humans must regard plants and animals as our equals, to Helen Chenoweth, the Idaho congresswoman who called environmentalism "a cloudy mixture of New Age mysticism, Native American folklore, and primitive earth worship." Mr. Allitt's critique of the relentless crisis mentality will lead many environmentalists to dismiss the book as anti-environmental, while anti-environmentalists will object to his conclusion that much conservation has been achieved at little cost to ordinary Americans.

Yet for all its balance, Mr. Allitt's account falls short in two important respects. He misunderstands "free-market environmentalists" and bundles them with the "Sagebrush Rebellion" of the late 1970s and the "Wise Use" movement of the late 1980s. There is little that connects them. While the last two, like today's protesters at Cliven Bundy's ranch in Nevada, advocated for state rather than federal control of the vast public lands of the West, they were dependent on the largess of a friendly public landlord. Free-market environmentalists urged property-based solutions, spurring tradable emission permits, congestion pricing on roadways, volume-based trash-collection fees, transferable ocean-fisheries quotas, and numerous other market approaches. Even EPA administrators "eventually realized," in Mr. Allitt's words, "that it would be better to allow manufacturers to trade in the right to pollute."

Mr. Allitt also pays little heed to the large role that environmental litigation (as well as the threat of litigation) has played over the past half-century. Nowhere has our divisive environmental politics been more apparent and influential. Thanks to bipartisan legislation of the 1960s and '70s, which opened the courthouse doors to both sides of the environmental divide, scarcely a timber sale or urban-development plan moves forward without courts being asked to assess whether the developer or the government has properly weighed the pros and cons. The judge as policy maker is thus a central part of the story.

Given the uncertainties of climate-change forecasting and the urgency portrayed by "alarmists," expect the "deniers" to hold their ground—and our environmental politics to remain in a climate of crisis.Mr. Huffman, dean emeritus of the Lewis & Clark Law School, is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of "Private Property and State Power" and "Private Property and the Constitution."

A paper published today in the International Journal of Climatology finds evidence of a strong influence of the natural Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO] on the climate of Myanmar over the 20th century. The authors reconstruct the Myanmar climate using tree ring data, producing another non-hockey-stick with temperatures warmer during the 1930's-1940s than at the end of the 20th century and end of the record in 2007. According to the authors, negative PDO phases correspond to dry conditions, due to reduced moisture flux into central Myanmar, and vice-versa. Many other peer-reviewed papers similarly demonstrate the major ocean oscillations are the primary "control knob" of climate, not CO2.

It is well known that climate models are unable to reproduce any of the major ocean oscillations including the PDO, ENSO, AMO, etc., which is one of the primary reasons why climate models have little to no skill reproducing or projecting climate.

Climate reconstruction from Teak tree rings shown in top graph demonstrates warmer temperatures during the 1930's-1940's than at the end of the record in 2007. Also shown is a close correspondence with the natural Pacific Decadal Oscillation in bottom graph

Full paper available hereThe climate of Myanmar: evidence for effects of the Pacific Decadal OscillationRosanne D'Arrigo and Caroline C. UmmenhoferWe show evidence for the influence of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) on Myanmar's monsoonal hydroclimate using both instrumental and 20th century reanalysis data, and a tree-ring width chronology from Myanmar's central Dry Zone. The ‘regime shifts’ identified in the instrumental PDO for the past century are clearly evident in the Myanmar teak. The teak record and PDO index correlate most significantly and positively during December–May, at r = 0.41 (0.002, n = 109). We generated composite climate anomalies for southern Asia and adjacent ocean areas during negative and positive PDO phases and above/below average teak growth for the May–September wet monsoon season. They show that negative (positive) PDO phases correspond to dry (wet) conditions, due to reduced (enhanced) moisture flux into central Myanmar. Multitaper Method (MTM) and Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) spectral analyses reveal considerable multidecadal variability over the past several centuries of the teak chronology, consistent with the PDO.

A paper published today in Nature finds that elevated CO2 in combination with warming further lengthens plant growing seasons, by helping to "conserve water, which enabled most species to remain active longer." In other words, increased CO2 and warming both independently and in combination improve the length and magnitude of plant productivity cycles, a win-win for the biosphere, and a truism well-known by greenhouse operators for a long time.

According to the authors, "Our results suggest that a longer growing season, especially in years or biomes where water is a limiting factor, is not due to warming alone, but also to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations that extend the active period of plant annual life cycles." The paper adds to many others finding increased CO2 improves plant resistance to drought.

Observations of a longer growing season through earlier plant growth in temperate to polar regions have been thought to be a response to climate warming. However, data from experimental warming studies indicate that many species that initiate leaf growth and flowering earlier also reach seed maturation and senesce earlier, shortening their active and reproductive periods. A conceptual model to explain this apparent contradiction, and an analysis of the effect of elevated CO2—which can delay annual life cycle events—on changing season length, have not been tested. Here we show that experimental warming in a temperate grassland led to a longer growing season through earlier leaf emergence by the first species to leaf, often a grass, and constant or delayed senescence by other species that were the last to senesce, supporting the conceptual model. Elevated CO2 further extended growing, but not reproductive, season length in the warmed grassland by conserving water, which enabled most species to remain active longer. Our results suggest that a longer growing season, especially in years or biomes where water is a limiting factor, is not due to warming alone, but also to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations that extend the active period of plant annual life cycles.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

A paper published today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution describes a new satellite dataset of solar UV-B radiation for use in ecological studies. According to the authors, "UV-B surfaces were correlated with global mean temperature and annual mean radiation data, but exhibited variable spatial associations across the globe." The finding is notable, since climate scientists dismiss the role of the Sun in climate change by only looking at the tiny 0.1% variations in total solar irradiance [TSI] over solar cycles, ignoring the large variations in solar UV of up to 100% over solar cycles, and which according to this paper, correlates to global mean temperature. Thus, the role of the Sun and solar amplification mechanisms on climate is only at the earliest stages of understanding.

Macroecology has prospered in recent years due in part to the wide array of climatic data, such as those provided by the WorldClim and CliMond data sets, which has become available for research. However, important environmental variables have still been missing, including spatial data sets on UV-B radiation, an increasingly recognized driver of ecological processes.

We developed a set of global UV-B surfaces (glUV) suitable to match common spatial scales in macroecology. Our data set is based on remotely sensed records from NASA's Ozone Monitoring Instrument (Aura-OMI). Following a similar approach as for the WorldClim and CliMond data sets, we processed daily UV-B measurements acquired over a period of eight years into monthly mean UV-B data and six ecologically meaningful UV-B variables with a 15-arc minute resolution. These bioclimatic variables represent Annual Mean UV-B, UV-B Seasonality, Mean UV-B of Highest Month, Mean UV-B of Lowest Month, Sum of Monthly Mean UV-B during Highest Quarter and Sum of Monthly Mean UV-B during Lowest Quarter. We correlated our data sets with selected variables of existing bioclimatic surfaces for land and with Terra–MODIS Sea Surface Temperature for ocean regions to test for relations to known gradients and patterns.

UV-B surfaces showed a distinct seasonal variance at a global scale, while the intensity of UV-B radiation decreased towards higher latitudes and was modified by topographic and climatic heterogeneity. UV-B surfaces were correlated with global mean temperature and annual mean radiation data, but exhibited variable spatial associations across the globe. UV-B surfaces were otherwise widely independent of existing bioclimatic surfaces.

Our data set provides new climatological information relevant for macroecological analyses. As UV-B is a known driver of numerous biological patterns and processes, our data set offers the potential to generate a better understanding of these dynamics in macroecology, biogeography, global change research and beyond. The glUV data set containing monthly mean UV-B data and six derived UV-B surfaces is freely available for download at: http://www.ufz.de/gluv.